Tax Resisting Robin Hoods Take from Government to Give to Charity

The “Comprehensive Disobedience” movement in Spain has developed international
ambitions, and as part of this project it has launched a new media
platform — RADI.MS — that aims to spread news
about allied projects around the world. The site content is currently
translated into English, Castillian (Spanish), and Catalan.

In mid-April, people across the United States struggle to fill out their
federal income tax returns. This shared calamity has created something of an
inverted holiday season — with grumbling about paperwork and frustration
towards government bureaucracy replacing the “peace on earth, goodwill to
men” of the Yuletide.

The money came from a war tax resisters’ “alternative fund” called the
“People’s Life
Fund” — one of more than a
dozen such funds in the United States. The Fund’s annual mid-April
“granting ceremony” brought together representatives from each of the
recipient groups, who accepted their checks and briefly summarized their
work for the benefit of the other attendees.

The People’s Life Fund (like most other such funds) accepts deposits from
war tax resisters of the money they are refusing to pay to the government.
The fund holds the money in alternative financial institutions like credit
unions and socially-responsible investments. If the government manages to
seize the resisted taxes from the resister, he or she can reclaim the money
from the Fund. Meanwhile, any investment returns from the deposits are
distributed to local groups in these annual granting ceremonies.

The spinning wheel was the center of Gandhi’s constructive program.
Redirection is the war tax resistance movement’s spinning wheel. The
“constructive program” is positive action that builds structures, systems,
and processes alongside the obstructive program of direct confrontation to
or noncooperation with oppression. When we redirect our war taxes, we
invest in imaginative and positive projects in our communities and around
the world.

At first, redirection was largely practiced by individuals, and in an ad hoc
manner. For example, in 1968, war tax resister Irving Hogan stood outside
the Federal Building in San Francisco and redirected his federal income tax
dollars one at a time by handing them out to passers by. “I want this money
to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” he said. “Here: go
buy yourself a beer.” But today redirection is frequently coordinated by
local or national war tax resistance groups.

Some have used redirection to strengthen the anti-war movement. One group
used its alternative fund to create a scholarship for college students who
had been barred from government financial aid because they refused to
register for the military draft. Another made an interest-free loan to a
legal defense group that was supporting a group of military draft resisters
who were on trial.

Traditional charity and relief organizations have also been recipients of
redirected taxes. In 2008, a national effort called the
“War Tax Boycott”
redirected $325,000 (approximately €235,000) in federal taxes from the
U.S. Treasury to
two organizations: a health clinic in New Orleans struggling with the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Direct Aid Iraq, which provided medical
care to refugees from the American war.

War tax resisters aren’t just redirecting their money. Many American war tax
resisters resist by deliberately lowering their income below the level where
the federal income tax applies. They do this by working fewer hours of paid
employment and by simplifying their lives so that they can live on less
money. Such resisters no longer have an amount of income tax to redirect,
but they can redirect their time instead. One low-income resister,
Clare Hanrahan, wrote: “I believe that redirection of time and presence
provides a personal and potent contribution to the common good, a gift of
self that has more dimensions than money alone. I redirect each time I give
my time and energy in support of good work within my community.”

When Erica Weiland of NWTRCC
delivered the keynote address at a recent “economic disobedience” conference
in Eugene, Oregon, she said:

When we heard about this work in Spain, it was clear to us that war tax
resistance is economic disobedience, the refusal to cooperate in an economic
system that is built on war, militarism, and the perpetuation of human
suffering. It was also clear to us that a variety of movements that also
practice economic disobedience are allied with us in this struggle. When
people refuse to pay debts to ruthless debt collectors, resist foreclosure,
set up bartering networks that don’t report bartering as income, set up gift
economies that avoid the
IRS
bartering regulations, organize lending circles for low-income borrowers,
counsel high school students on alternatives to military service, squat
abandoned houses, organize tent cities for the homeless regardless of
bureaucratic and inhumane regulations, and struggle against corrupt
landlords and employers, we are engaging in economic disobedience. The
economic system we live under is not set up to support us, so we should
withdraw our support from the system whenever feasible.

American war tax resisters are withdrawing from the warfare state and the
economic model it enforces and are committing themselves with all of their
strength and all of their resources to the creation of a more just system in
which we can live with dignity. In doing so, they are blazing the trail that
leads to this better world we all yearn for.

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